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From DC Wikia:
An ancient Egyptian pyramid is being erected in the town square, as Andrea, Cindy, Rick and Doctor Joshua Barnes, the High School Principal, watch. From the pyramid emerges Scarab, an evil sorcerer who was imprisoned inside. As he uses his magic to capture the others, Andrea transforms herself into The Mighty Isis and saves her friends. Scarab then attacks Isis with a lightning bolt and she deflects it with one of her spells. Scarab takes to the air to get away and Isis follows him. To distract her, Scarab causes an airplane to disintegrate while airborne and Isis has to rescue the passengers. Scarab gets away and Isis returns to the high school to become Andrea.
She is met by Cindy, who asks Andrea about the time she helped in finding a pyramid. Andrea’s mind then wanders back to the time she found the amulet that gave her the powers of Isis. As Andrea looks through magic books to find a way to defeat Scarab, he roams the streets. He uses his telepathy to locate Isis but finds Andrea instead. He uses her to set a trap for Isis by creating a magic aura around her that destroys anyone with magical powers. He sets fire to Andrea’s house, then flies to the White House to capture the President. Meanwhile, Andrea’s pet bird, a crow named Tut, unties the gag in her mouth. Andrea quickly says, “Mighty Isis!” As she is transformed into the Goddess, the aura that surrounded her is destroyed instantly. She commands the fire to go out, then takes to the sky to go after Scarab. On the way to the White House, Isis uses her powers to transport the pyramid to the White House grounds. She creates oak trees to camouflage it. Isis challenges Scarab to face her. As Scarab attacks Isis, she lowers the pyramid and traps him inside. Afterward, Andrea explains to her friends that when Scarab was forced to reenter the pyramid, he would be imprisoned there forever.

***

The text page provides a brief history of the goddess.

***

This comic was on the shelves in July 1976. By this time the TV show Isis was completed her first season. In September, season two, comprising seven new shows, would debut.
A great beginning. The art is wonderful – Wally Wood’s inks dominates Estradas’ pencils – who is himself a great artist – with a very clean and (otherwise) identifiable style.
The story was NOT aimed at children. Adult comic book fans would find the story and art enjoyable, too. Like the TV show, there was a lesson, of sorts, at the end; but it was in the context of character conversation as opposed to Isis speaking directly into the screen (as was done in her first appearance in Shazam #25).
Isis’ incantations are wordy, but never annoying (compared to, say, Zatanna, where one needs a pocket mirror to read her spells). At one point in their battle Scarab calls her “noisome”, which means smelly, not noisy.
I’d bet she smells nice … more flowery and earthy than perfume-y … I don’t know why …

***

About the author: Michael Curry is the author of the Brave & Bold: From Silent Knight to Dark Knight, The Day John F Kennedy Met the Beatles and the award-winning Abby’s Road, the Long and Winding Road to Adoption and How Facebook, Aquaman and Theodore Roosevelt Helped. Check his website for more releases! Thanks for reading!

DC-TV

When most people think of DC television … well … nothing pops into mind.

When most fans of DC comics think of DC television, their minds go to the live-action shows such as Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham, or the upcoming Black Lightning.

Some comics fans may think of excellent animated series like Batman: TAS, Batman Beyond and Justice League Unlimited.

But for some of us the phrase “DC-TV” takes us back to 1976 and 1977 and four comic books published by DC but put under a different banner (now we would call it an “imprint”): the DC-TV Series of comics!

Superfriends originally aired in 1973 and 1974, lasting only one season. It was revived as a mid-season replacement in 1976 and one version or the other continue to air into the mid-1980s. The comic Superfriends (TV shows are italicized, comics underlined) was published starting November 1976 until August of 1981, lasting 47 issues. The Saturday morning cartoon still being popular, the comic used the DC-TV logo through its entire run.

Shazam (Captain Marvel) debuted in September 1974 for two seasons with a third as part of the Shazam/Isis Hour in late 1976 – coinciding with the DC/TV comic books debut. The comic book published its first DC issue in 1973 and was suspended in early 1976 – despite the still-popular TV show. It was revived as a DC-TV comic and lasted for 11 more issues (until June 1978), the last two issues without the DC-TV logo. The comic book lasted longer than the TV show, but to be fair it started before the show as well …

Isis debuted in September 1975 and lasted for 2 years and 22 episodes. She was never actually given her own program, but linked with Captain Marvel in the Shazam/Isis Hour. Her comic lasted 8 issues until January 1978, lasting longer than the television show – athough the character appeared in animated form in other Filmation shows (such as Freedom Force in 1980).

Welcome Back Kotter also debuted in September 1975 and lasted until May of 1979. Its comic lasted ten issues until May 1978. An unpublished story and other features were printed in a tabloid-size special edition.

Rumors abound of negotiations of a MASH comic book. If true, it did not go far.

Shazam #25, with an October 1976 cover date, introduced us not only to Isis, but the DC-TV series. The other three comic books debuted in November 1976, but available on the newsstands (as per the house ad) June, July and August of 1976.

For only the second time in its history, National/DC changed its logo to accommodate this special series of comics. The first issues had a simple DC-TV logo attached to a console television showing us the star of the magazine. This was during their “cigar-band” logo period. When the publisher went back to the logo in the upper-left corner, it added a square-shaped “TV” to its circular starred “DC”.

I’ll review most of the DC-TV line-up in this blog. I’ll stop with Super Friends #13 (July 1978) when it became the last title of the line.

I hope you enjoy the blog series and I look forward to your comments.

***

About the author: Michael Curry is the author of the Brave & Bold: From Silent Knight to Dark Knight, The Day John F Kennedy Met the Beatles and the award-winning Abby’s Road, the Long and Winding Road to Adoption and How Facebook, Aquaman and Theodore Roosevelt Helped. Check his website for more releases! Thanks for reading!

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow just completed Season Two. And it will have a Season Three – something that was in doubt this time last year.

Season One was savaged by the critics and all but the most trollish of DC trolls. I liked it, I did. But I wasn’t as giddy about its first season as I was about the first season of Arrow or Flash … read my review by clicking on the link above.

This second season was better, per the critics and the trolls. And indeed it was.

I liked Season Two as well, but I still didn’t love it.

Why?

I have a hard time putting my finger on the why. And I figured out why while writing this review – which was partly my goal.

It was a better show than the prior season– they pruned the cast; the remaining members grew and the new ones were allowed more depth (a smaller cast allows that). They had a variety of Big Bads instead of one. The stories were fair despite the Pez-dispenser-like lessons of history.

Maybe it is unfair to compare it to the joy of watching Flash and Supergirl, where the glee (pardon the pun) of the cast and writers warm the viewers like the sun in spring. However, the show is better than the brooding and plodding Season Five of Arrow, which unfortunately followed its brooding and plodding Season Four.

Put it this way: I watch Flash and Supergirl as soon as I can (I tivo all my shows and watch them later) – usually the next day; with LoT I sometimes wait until the weekend; Arrow and some others (Agents of Shield, as another example) are watched in bundles of two or three episodes at a time because of their glacial story progression.

So LoT came in a distant third this year. The other CW shows have about six more episodes this season, so it is possible for them to blow it and make LoT look like the Mary Tyler Moore Show, but that is doubtful.

Let’s look at the hows and whys this season was better – or worse – than the first:

The cast was trimmed this season. Hawkgirl is gone. Too bad. Perhaps with this “new” setting of Season Two the character would have been able to do more than mourn the death of Carter Hall and be the constant captive of Vandal Savage. The actress Ciara Renée deserved better.

Arthur Darvill had other commitments during the season so Rip Hunter was written out of most of the show. I thought it would be the death knell but it actually helped. Sara Lance grew into the role of the captain of our crew. Rip’s eventual return just showed us how crowded the cast was – we and Rip realized he was … well … not needed anymore. I hope he pops up from time to time.

The loss of Wentworth Miller as Leonard Snart/Captain Cold was also a blow, or so I thought. Here was the best character of Season One (Mick Rory, now no longer Snart’s sidekick, steals every scene like the thief he is. The only good thing about Wentworth Miller leaving the show was Dominic Purcell’s ascendancy. He is wonderful – Rory was meant to be two-dimensional and ends up being the most well-rounded character of the show!).

Snart, Hunter and Hawkgirl were replaced by Steel and Vixen – two characters who started off in comics of the 1970s but did not really come into their own popularity until the 1980s. They helped provide some missing muscle and exposition (Steel was an historian and Vixen knew where to find this Season’s MacGuffin). They began a more believable romance than last year’s Atom-Hawkgirl coupling.

The Season starts out promising: the Legends’ job is to find time aberrations and set things straight: zombies in the Civil War, Albert Einstein kidnapped by Nazis. They confront the Justice Society (the handling of their roster caused quite a kerfuffle amongst the DC purists). Then the Big Bads and this season’s major MacGuffin are introduced:

The Legion of Doom consists of past bad guys from the Arrowverse – Eobard Thawn, trying to save his existence from being destroyed; Malcolm Merlyn – John Barrowman sleepwalking through this worn-out character; Damien Darhke, the Big Bad from Arrow Season 4, again played by Neal McDonough who smirked and smarmed as thoroughly as he did in Arrow. After 20 episodes there and 10 here, I think the audience has been sated with Darkhe, thank you. Wentworth Miller was touted as a member of the Legion, but he was only in the last three episodes or so.

The MacGuffin was the Spear of Destiny – a major prop in the DC comic book universe and a nice addition here – the spear the Roman soldier used to pierce the side of Jesus. In the comics, whosoever held the spear would rule the world. Hitler possessed it and prevented Superman and the other Justice Society members from going to Europe and kicking his ass (hence the reasoning behind why Superman, Dr. Fate, Green Lantern and others didn’t simply … go to Europe and kick his ass).

In LoT the Spear of Destiny can alter reality – Thawne wants it to create a universe in which his ancestor lived and thus he continued to exist. The Justice Society took the Spear and hid it throughout history. Thus creating the plot thread throughout the rest of the show, leading to a final big battle at the season’s end.

The season finale seemed almost tacked on. They go back to a previous adventure in World War One to change their eventual defeat that allows the Legion to take the spear – thus breaking the #1 temporal law – don’t go back and meet yourself (which some of the members had already done in Season One, but I assume, like Star Trek 5, we are to pretend that never happened).

Odd that Season Two only lasted 17 episodes instead of the usual 22 or 23, which may explain why the season finale seemed so “tacked on” – now that I bring it up, this plot thread could have been completed two or three shows before even that … heaven forfend they do some done-in-one episodes as filler. Subtract the obvious filler – the Jonah Hex redo and the cross-over with the other Arrowverse shows and we have only 15 episodes. Couldn’t the other 7 shows simply be well-done stand-alone episodes to finish out the season and prepare us for any changes in Season Three?

They COULD have done some fun single-episode time-travel shows. In my primer (the link is above) I mentioned they were entering into Doctor Who territory: going to different times and meeting the famous and infamous. They did that (George Washington, etc.), but it didn’t quite click.

The budget is tight on the show, I know. Which is why Firestorm rarely appears (and why wasn’t Victor Garber given more to do? After he revealed his daughter as a time aberration and turned over command to Sara Lance, he practically disappeared. Fortunately, he was excellent in the Flash’s musical episode!).

Brandon Routh was demoted from the eccentric he played in Flash down to the flightiness of last season to now being an idiotic man-child. Brandon Routh and Ray Palmer deserve better. He and Stein should be the geniuses of the series; like Cisco and Winn, creating the weekly MacGuffins to help defeat the bad guy.

On the other hand, Franz Drameh’s Jefferson Jackson was promoted from last season’s wise-ass kid to the engineer. He should be helping the geniuses Palmer and Stein with the mechanical side of the MacGuffin-making.

***

OK, so what was it about Season Two that I did not like? While I still haven’t quite put my finger on it, I do have some ideas to heal the show’s ills:

The Berlanti method is growing thin. After five seasons of Arrow, three in Flash, and one in LoT, the Season-long Big Bad story arc is an idea whose time is over. Do what is being done in Supergirl and make the Big Bad only a major recurring (not constant) villain – as they did with Lillian Luthor/Argus and Rhea (Mon-El’s mother). Weren’t you tired of Thawne snatching victory away from the Legends at the end of every episode?

Go back to fixing time aberrations. Not just on earth but through the universe. If you are going to emulate a TV show, you can do worse than Doctor Who. Introduce Kanjar Ro as an intergalactic tyrant. Introduce Krona as a time-meddler (he would make a good Big Bad AND be a nice way to FINALLY introduce the Green Lantern Corps into the Arrowverse)

Make “small” story arcs. The only good thing Agents of Shield has done in three years is having two separate story arcs this season – Ghost Rider for the fall and LMD for the spring.

And although the budget is not huge, PLEASE hire an historian. A real one. Nothing ruins a good story when you know the very premise is wrong. I realize this isn’t PBS, but stop using a paragraph or two from Wikipedia to get the gist of your background material.

For example: In one episode they had to find JRR Tolkien in the trenches of World War One. Tolkien knew a possible location to the tomb of Sir Gawain that could lead the Legends to a vial of the Jesus’ blood which could be used to destroy the Spear of Destiny … that lived in the house that Jack built. The Legends knew this because of a book Tolkien wrote about Sir Gawain. No such book exists – he wrote a translation of a lay of Sir Gawain, but not a treatise. And not during/before WWII…

While searching for him, they overheard a sergeant yelled “Fool of a Tolkien” to a sick soldier. Aha! This must be JRR! And sure enough …

The line was an homage to the line “Fool of a Took!” from Fellowship of the Ring. I bristled when I heard the line. It took away from Tolkien’s ability as a writer. It implied that he did not create the line – he just used what other people did. He did not. That is wrong.

“Lighten up,” you might say, “it was just a fun line.”

No it wasn’t. It was disrespectful. Same as when the Legends met George Lucas and the characters ended up in a pre-replica of the trash compactor scene. As with the Tolkien quotes, it diminished the genius and the originality of Lucas’ idea – a young lad and some friends are whisked away from their home by a quirky wizard to go fight a dark lord and his minions who are bent on ruling the … oh…

Never mind …

But it insults our intelligence as it insults the creativity of the historical guests (this is the same problem I have with Forest Gump or the “Marvin Berry” scene in Back to the Future).

Knock it off. It turns idols into thieves and it’s a short-cut by piss-pour writers for a cheap laugh.

***

As I hoped, writing this little opinion piece has revealed what nags me about the show: if Legends of Tomorrow weren’t connected to the comic book characters I read and loved as a kid, I would not be interested in watching this show.

Compare that to, say, the superb first season of Arrow. I’d have loved that season even without the superhero lineage.

(Whereas Flash and Supergirl are too inextractibly linked to their comic books to say that. Were anyone to make those two shows renaming their leads they would face a copyright lawsuit faster than you can say “Shazam”. That’s a great line if you know the history of comic book litigation…)

But I repeat – I would likely not watch LoT if not for the DC roster. The stories and characters may not be great – but it’s the Atom! And the Justice Society! It may insult my intelligence – but there’s Jonah Hex!

***

So I still like the show. Perhaps the reason it gets under my skin so is that with some really simple (and inexpensive) tweaks it could be so much better. Instead of being fun in a frat-boy-“that-was-cool-wasn’t-it” way it could be fun AND thrilling. Season Two was an improvement over Season One. Season Three could be better still!

I cheer for the show – I really am rooting for it to do well; to be better! Stop emulating the storytelling-style of Arrow and Flash. You don’t need to. Do shorter story arcs! Do solo stories focusing on only one or two characters! When they meet real life legends – let them remain legends, not accidents.

Don’t emulate others. Be different.

Most legends are…

Original Material Copyright 2017 Michael Curry

Characters mentioned and their images are copyright their respective holders. Thanks to DC Comics, the CW Network and Berlanti Productions and the actors portrayed for the use of their images.

I also thank the original creators of all characters mentioned, whether or not they have been properly compensated (gratmens during the credits aside).

The CW has just announced it has picked up Constantine as an animated series for CW Seed during its Television Critics Association panel.

The show will feature Matt Ryan, who starred as the title character in the fan favorite but short-lived NBC show.

Fans can expect the episodes to be 10 minute in length similar to the Vixen series that ran on CW Seed. Right now, episode count is expected to be either five or six. The show, like Vixen, will exist in the Arrow-verse which consists of Arrow, Flash, Legends Of Tomorrow & Supergirl.

While fans were expecting another live-action cameo from the character, they will be more than pleased with this. Back at New York Comic Con, Ryan told our own Russ Burlingame that while he was at the time doing the voice for Constantine in Justice League Dark, he’s learned “not to rule anything out.” He said that in terms of an Arrow return, he’s open to it because: “I love the character.”

Both Constantine and Arrow, like all of DC Comics-inspired TV series, are produced by Warner Bros. TV.

Quality Comics was a successful comic book company during the medium’s golden age. It introduced Kid Eternity, the Blackhawks, the much-lauded Spirit and Plastic Man to comics. The company closed shop in the mid-1950s and the catalogue of characters was bought by DC/National. They continued only four of Quality’s titles: GI Combat, Plastic Man (although DC would not publish a Plastic Man comic until the 1960s), Blackhawk, and Heart Throbs – all but the latter were still being published by the time of the Bicentennial (Plastic Man especially would get much more popular in the coming decades).

But what of the other characters of the defunct company? They languished until 1973 when they were introduced to DC readers in Justice League of America #107 in that group’s annual meeting with the Justice Society of America.

The Quality characters, that issue told us, were from an alternate earth – Earth X (most DC characters lived in Earth 1), where the Nazi’s won WWII. The sole superhero survivors of that conflict were Uncle Sam, the Ray, Doll Man, the Human Bomb, Phantom Girl and the Black Condor. With the combined might of the JLA and JSA, the World War (of Earth X) was finally won by the Allies; so the Quality heroes decided to form a permanent group and move to Earth 1. A version of this story was re-imagined in Batman: The Brave & The Bold…

A letter writer in this issue questioned that – why not have adventures on “their own” earth showing the group rebuilding their world? The editor said that would not make a very good comic book. Perhaps, but would the sales of the comic have been any worse than they were for their adventures on Earth 1? The editor guaranteed there would be an issue #4, an odd thing to say for a successful comic. The comic lasted for 13 issues – personally I loved every one of them! In my opinion the first issues were, indeed, stinkers; but the series picked up steam after a while.

I particularly enjoy the “secret” Marvel crossover in issues #8 & 9 with the Invaders. Thinly disguised versions of Namor, Captain America, Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro fought our heroes. Mirror dopplegangers of the Freedom Fighters appeared in the Invaders comic.

Freedom Fighters was cancelled just before the “DC Explosion” of 1978 and merged with Secret Society of Supervillains. SSOSV was cancelled too – no “Explosion” issues were released, although it is available in the Cancelled Comic Cavalcade and as a SSOSV trade paperback. But the cliffhanger – the Silver Ghost hires a company of villains to defeat the FF once and for all – was never resolved.

Referring to them as the FF in the letter columns and the comic itself seemed awkward. Who didn’t first think of the Fantastic Four, instead?

Although this issue contains a done-in-one story, a back story continues through the series – the FF are on the run from the police after being tricked by the Silver Ghost (in issue #1) into helping him commit crimes.

The FF escape from a police showdown (last issues cliffhanger, I presume), and hide out in a dumpy loft apartment. Doll Man creates an invisible shield for them.

Meanwhile, Arthur T. Sommar finally snaps and kills his wife. He goes to work and ends up in the midst of a battle between the FF and a gang of sport-supply store robbers! Unbeknownst to all, two youthful Qwardian teenagers are exploring earth and also chance upon the battle. They bombard Sommar with a Staser ray to even the odds – mutating him into Scragg the Super Sniper!

The FF defeat Scragg and take him in for questioning. He reverts back to Sommar and calls his lawyer. The operator has a similar screechy voice as his wife, which snaps him back into his Scragg persona!

The FF defeat him again at the twin towers of the WorldTradeCenter (Human Bomb: “What’s this clown’s next act — fragging those towers?” 20/20 hindsight makes this reader want to say, “Ouch…”) with the Human Bomb taking the brunt of Scragg’s damage. The Ray tries to grab Scragg’s arm before he plummets to the pavement, but his hand goes ethereal like Phantom Girl’s and Scragg slips away! The incorporeality is likely due to the invisibility ray, Doll Man assumes.

Back at their loft, the FF realize they signed a lease under their civilian identities – which are known by the police! They must leave. Where can they go to be safe and not hunted like criminals? Where?

Wonder Woman appears next issue per the last-panel blurb! That issue (#4) was the first issue of Freedom Fighters I owned and read.

Freedom Fanmail: Mike White of Mackinaw, IL (positive, although the Ray’s contempt of Uncle Sam was criticized – Conway explains that although the FF joined together for common purpose, they aren’t buddies!) and Harvey Sobol of New York, NY (negative – criticizing the art and their move to Earth 1 instead of helping rebuild their own home world).

Next: Superman #301!

***

Original Material copyright 2015 Michael Curry

Images used are copyright their respective holders and reproduced here under the “Fair Use” doctrine of 17 USC 106 & 106a for the purposes of criticism and comment.